Comply by July 4 or lose standing as middleman: Govt to Twitter

The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) has given Twitter “one last opportunity” to adjust to its blocking orders. In a missive despatched on Monday, the ministry warned that if content material flagged by it isn’t taken down by the microblogging platform, the corporate will threat dropping its immunity as an middleman.

The MeitY discover, addressed to Twitter’s chief compliance officer, mentioned that whereas a delegated officer of the ministry has issued numerous instructions for blocking sure items of content material and accounts beneath Section 69(A) of the Information Technology Act, the corporate has “failed to comply with the directions on multiple occasions”. Section 69(A) of the IT Act empowers the federal government to challenge blocking orders to social media firms.

The MeitY has given Twitter till July 4 to adjust to all its blocking orders, failing which it would lose its middleman standing, which is able to make the web site legally accountable for content material posted by customers on its platform. Queries despatched to Twitter remained unanswered till publication.

A senior authorities official, on the situation of anonymity, mentioned, “The notices sent to Twitter pertain to several cases, both where the government had asked it to take down certain content and where the company had wrongfully taken down some content.”

According to information shared by Twitter with the Lumen database, the corporate has blocked quite a lot of tweets in India, together with a tweet by US-based NGO Freedom House on India’s declining press freedom. Twitter voluntarily submits details about content material and accounts it has blocked following authorities orders with the Lumen database, which is managed beneath an impartial analysis mission of the Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

The MeitY’s motion comes because it has proposed recent amendments to guidelines governing intermediaries like Twitter and Facebook — key amongst which is a proposal to arrange government-appointed grievance committees with the facility to evaluation and revoke content material moderation choices taken by these firms.

Twitter had run into hassle with the federal government final 12 months as nicely after a brand new set of middleman guidelines got here into impact in May 2021. The challenge then was over Twitter appointing an exterior individual as its India-based grievance officer. The guidelines require that the grievance officer be an worker of the corporate.